St. Elvis Presley Precisely: The Ten Commandments
1. Thou shalt have no other teddy bear but me. Please, please, love me true, I beg of you.

2. Thou shalt put a chain around my neck and lead me anywhere, but graven images--no way, as I don't have a wooden heart: unless of course it was something in Jailhouse Rock (though keep in mind what happened to Jael with the nail).

3. Thy Daddy's name is "Big Boots," but don't take that in vain.

4. It's Saturday night and thou just got paid. But remember the Sabbath and keep it cool. Good Shep. Old Shep--thou ain't nothin' but a hound dog. You ain't never caught a rabbi and you ain't no friend of mine.

5. Honolulu, baby.

6. Thou shalt not kill, even in "GI Blues."

7. With little sister, don't, though I guess that's incest rather than adultery. Nor with the girl of thy best friend, though that's not really what I mean either. Whatever. For if thou dost, thou shalt be down at the end of lonely street until the third generation. It's called Heartbreak Hotel.

10. "Don't, don't. Don't, don't." That's what I say, each time I behold you this way. This you can believe, I will never leave you, baby. Just don't, that's all. Just don't.

The element, carbon, has played a pivotal role in Phil Poyser's life. He comes from a family of miners with its roots deep in the area around the Nottinghamshire coalfields and his natal village of Mansfield Woodhouse. His university studies at South Kensington's Imperial College of Science and Technology let to a career in organic chemistry (the myriad compounds of carbon), whilst retirement from the pharmaceutical industry in 2007 saw a move to organic gardening and the flourishing of his lifelong love of poetry: a primrose path from C-reactive protein to C-reative Writing, so to speak. No coincidence then that he's a member of Macclesfield Creative Writing Group and an active open-miker in and around the North-West.

About the Editor

A.J. Huffman has published thirteen full-length poetry collections, fourteen solo poetry chapbooks and one joint poetry chapbook through various small presses. Her most recent releases, The Pyre On Which Tomorrow Burns (Scars Publications), Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink), A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press), and Familiar Illusions (Flutter Press) are now available from their respective publishers. She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2600 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, The Bookends Review, Bone Orchard, Corvus Review, EgoPHobia, and Kritya. She is the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.